Scott Henderson Discussion

[Kevin Thomas]

Hi Scott

I'd like to know if there are artists that you had to spend a lot of time listening to before you get them and like them, or that you've tried to (because someone you respect love them) but never got it.

I try to listen to many kind of things, and I really love music that I never would have though I'd do 10 or 20 years ago. But I really don't get Allan Holdsworth's music.

If I understood his music and did not like it, that would be it, no problem. There are a lot of things I like, and even more things that I don't like.

But in Holdsworth's case, I can't even get into it. And since artists I really like say he's a mine of gold, I feel I'm missing something.
Coming from Hendrix and Zeppelin, what was you feeling when you first heard him?

Kevin

[Red Suede]

Listen to the Bruford, (esp One Of A Kind), U.K., Gong, Jean Luc Ponty, Tony Williams, and that'll give you an idea........

[Scott Henderson]

What he said.... Allan is an innovator and his vocabulary is all his own. When he plays without keyboards, it tends to sound a bit avant-garde because he's playing through complicated chord changes and his vocabulary isn't based on chord tones with passing tones like the traditional jazz vocabulary. I've been playing for a long time, but I have a hard time hearing the harmony on some of Allan's solos. When there are keyboards behind him, it's much easier to hear what he's doing through the changes - and it's amazing. He's a seriously bad ass player.

[Red Suede]

I met him a while ago, and his hands are so big they can go around a Fosters Lager can! He seems to be using standard modal harmony, but he can use different note placement than the rest of us can. Check out Scott's book and you'll get an idea of this. First time I saw him when he got out of Bruford, I fell asleep because I didn't understand it. Knew it was great, but I didn't get it. Now I understand it, but am still trying to "get" it.

[slyzspyz]

this is just a comment on one aspect of Allan Holdsworth’s sound, not his overall approach....

I had a lesson once with James Muller who is a great Australian jazz guitarist (Scott’s mentioned him before too), and he said he’d been working on some Allan Holdsworth ideas. One of which was a scale that Holdsworth demonstrates in his instructional video, and amongst other things James was checking out different permutations of triads within the scale.

I showed this scale to another musician who said “oh that’s just Messiaen’s third mode of limited transposition”. There are a few ways of looking at it
w-h-h-w-h-h-w-h-h (whole steps and half steps), the first three notes of a minor scale repeated at major thirds, or imagine a chromatic scale with an augmented triad removed etc

Anyway after some practice and more listening, a lot of Holdsworth’s vocabulary started to make a little bit more sense and I could hear that sound a lot in AH’s playing e.g. he often plays an idea then repeats it twice a major third lower each time, the sum total of the notes coming from this scale. He seems to use it sometimes as an “effect” or transitional sound, not so much to outline a particular chord

There are also some Youtube clips from a Nelson Veras clinic where he runs through ideas using some of these modes
Other players (e.g. Brecker) take a similar approach with the augmented scale which is based on the same structure with 3 notes removed m3,h,m3,h,m3,h

Hard to implement in one’s own playing without a lot of practice!